Viewers may remember Belmopan resident Mike Menjivar – the GSU shot up his home two years ago.
But the cops said he was the one who fired first and so Menjivar was charged with 9 counts of attempted murder, 9 counts of aggravated assault, and 1 count of damage to property for allegedly shooting at GSU officers during their early morning raid on his home on May 20, 2011.
He has been standing trial without a jury before Justice Dennis Hanomansingh, and yesterday, the defence closed their case.
Well, Menjivar's attorney, Arthur Saldivar, says that he hasn't been given a fair trial so far because of several procedural issues which only came up while the case was actually heard in the court.
Saldivar's first complaint is that the lead investigator who built the case against Menjivar was the same officer who was in charge of the raid. According to Saldivar, that is a conflict of interest because essentially, it meant that the GSU was investigating themselves, which also meant that they couldn't be objective.
According to Saldivar, the lead investigator buried evidence which could have shown that Menjivar truly believed that he had to defend himself against men, who didn't identify themselves as police. He said that he found this witness, who explained in court, and by written statement, that Menjivar genuinely thought he was being assaulted by armed assailants not connected with police:
Arthur Saldivar - Attorney for Mike Menjivar
"What Sergeant Mahler Joseph stated was that she received four phone calls around 5:00 o'clock or thereafter. The phone calls were from Mr. Menjivar and his wife stated that while she was on the phone she could hear gunshots and that Mr. Menjivar was telling her to send the police quickly and she told him that the Belmopan police were on their way. What this denotes is that Mike Menjivar inside his house, within the room that he was locked up in did not know that the police were outside - he was calling the police. What she also told the court yesterday was that she told Mr. Menjivar to ask the people who said they were police officers, who were at that time, outside his bathroom door inside of his house - to ask what their names were to verify if these were actually police officers, which he did. He followed her instructions and asked those persons for their names to which he was responded with expletives and that they would kill him. When it came to trial, the police didn't even bother to find out that this man didn't have any criminal arrest, that the man was never convicted of any crime in his life. He had never had any incidence where he was investigated, drugs, fire arms or anything of the sort - that when they did search the house that they didn't find anything. The gun that he had that had a magazine, which could have held 14 bullets still had 9 bullets in it. This was not a man who was shooting at the police - wantonly and discriminately but in his home there were 125 bullet holes in the man's house."
Another issue which Saldivar took issue with is that today, closing arguments were supposed to be heard, but the Director of Public Prosecutions, Cheryl-Lynn Vidal asked for an adjournment so that the crown counsel who was handling the case could have more time.
According to Saldivar, they shouldn't be given any excuse to delay the trial because they were the ones who controlled the evidence.
We asked DPP Vidal about that this evening, who told us that there were 2 counsels assigned the case, a senior counsel, and a junior counsel. She said that the more experienced counsel was unable to attend the trial for the last few days, and so the junior counsel had to finish up the case.
She said that the junior attorney explained to her that due to the technical nature of the case, and because of the fact that he was not in control of the full trial, he wasn't prepared to make the closing statements today.
According to Vidal, there was nothing sinister involved with her intervention and that it was only to allow her office to handle the case as best as possible all the way through.
